Voltron on FFWD
Just when you think it must be finished, more and more and more goes on. Layers baby, tis all about layers. 1200 pictures in 900 hours = not too shabby. Hats off to Mr. Robert Burden
Via Boing Boing
Lost perspective lately?
Picture from artist’s website
I actually walked past this on the way to get my hair massacred the other day. Meant to go back and take a photo, but when I came out of Bumble, I was too distracted by my head freezing and completely forgot. As luck would have it, the very next day I watched the video below and saw the exact thing that I’d seen on that little sidewalk in the Meat Packing district. Check out Aakash Nihalani’s site for more.
Sketch Theater and paint trail
I love how the internet pulls you down a road. Found the above clip on [insert awkward face for place I forgot to credit here], which prompted me to explore Sketch Theatre, while also prodding me to check out the artist’s (Nate Frizzell), site. That lead me to his blog where he talks about his latest show, and the meaning behind each piece, which lead me to the clip below (which also shows the final artwork form the above sketch). I love these little internet discovery moments.
Nate Frizzell ‘Put on a Happy Face’ Preview from Modus Films on Vimeo.
So far so awesome.
I’m currently reading The War of Art on the recommendation of a co-freelancer I met. It’s a quick read – seriously, I got halfway through riding the subway this morning – and a kind of procrastinatory kick in the pants. ‘Cause guess what, I’m a world-class procrastinator and my novel ain’t writing itself. Sadly. Although, I could look at myself reading this book and say that’s an act of procrastination in itself, but let’s not look at these things too closely.
This particular bit stuck out this morning:
What does Resistance feel like?
First, unhappiness. We feel like hell. A low-grade misery pervades everything. We’re bored, we’re restless. We can’t get no satisfaction. There’s guilt but we can’t put our finger on the source. We want to go back to bed; we want to get up and party. We feel unloved and unlovable. We’re disgusted. We hate our lives. We hate ourselves.Unalleviated, Resistance mounts to a pitch that becomes unendurable. At this point vices kick in. Dope, adultery, web surfing.
Beyond that, Resistance becomes clinical. Depression, aggression, dysfunction. Then actual crime and physical self-destruction.
Sounds like life, I know. It isn’t. It’s Resistance.
What makes it tricky is that we live in a consumer culture that’s acutely aware of this unhappiness and has mass produced all its profit-seeking artillery to exploit it. By selling us products, a drug, a distraction, John Lennon once wrote:
Well you think you’re so clever
and classless and free
But you’re all fucking peasants
As far as I can seeAs artists and professionals is our obligation to enact our own internal revolution, a private insurrection inside our own skulls. In this uprising we free ourselves from the tyranny of advertising, movies, video games, magazines, TV, and MTV by which we have been hypnotized from the cradle. We unplug ourselves from the grid by recognizing that we will never cure our restlessness by contributing our disposable income to the bottom line of Bullshit, Inc., but only by doing our work.
Last week, I made a half-baked decision to declare the Thanksgiving Break (5 days starting Thursday) “Noodle’s Faff Free Festival“. Roughly explained, it is 5 days where all faffing about activities are banned, and writing is mandatory. You will not see me online, you will not see me racking up gamer points on X-box, and I will not see myself sitting in front of the idiot box watching “While you were Sleeping” for the umpteenth time (a phenomenon I have dubbed “Hypno-Bullockism i.e. the inability to resist the Sandra Bullock movies “While you were Sleeping” and “Miss Congeniality”, even though you don’t think they’re particularly good.)
This decision came shortly after receiving this charming DIY postcard from Matt (top flipped for posting purposes, he did design it correctly). I think the cosmos is trying to tell me something about…I dunno. Putting my arse in a seat and writing. What thing are you avoiding by consuming, procrastinating and generally giving in to Resistance?
Get knitted.
Well, it ain’t no Cosby sweater. The band name “Tricot Machine” translates to ‘knitting machine’.
Via Drawn
“Mankind is no Island”
Just awesome. Winner of Tropfest 2008
Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic
Photo: Lisa Rinzler
This sucked up a good 20 minutes of my day (in a fascinatingly good way). Just the sheer number of years some of these people spent institutionalized boggles this lil’ mind. Here’s the project background:
When Willard Psychiatric Center closed in 1995, staff members Beverly Courtwright and Lisa Hoffman, along with Craig Williams, a New York State Museum curator, worked to save historical artifacts there. Beverly found a door tucked under the pigeon-infested rafters of an attic. Prying it open, they found rows of wooden racks, packed with almost 400 suitcases of all shapes and types – men’s on the left, women’s on the right, alphabetized, labeled, and covered by bird droppings, seemingly untouched for years. Realizing they had stumbled across unique and valuable artifacts, Craig had the suitcases moved to the Museum’s warehouse near Albany.
This is where Darby Penney and Peter Stastny encountered the luggage in 1999, wrapped in dusty plastic sheets. Working with a list of names and hospital identification numbers, they went through the suitcases to choose a smaller number of individuals and identify their belongings for closer study. Peter, Darby, and photographer Lisa Rinzler spent several years immersed in the material and documentary remnants of these people’s lives, forming relationships with them through the things they left behind. They went to their homes, visited their graves, read their correspondence and medical records, studied their snapshots, talked to their neighbors and caretakers, and Lisa took photographs of what they saw.
Five artists. One magnificent library. (And a hand job)
Now that I have your attention (and you’ll get the hand job reference if you watch the video), this is a great little creative idea from NY Public Library and Design*Sponge. Looking forward to seeing where this goes and the pieces produced.
The New York Public Library holds a wealth of unexpected sources of inspiration for artists and designers—from vintage valentines and textile patterns, to fabric samples and turn-of-the-century menus from around the world. For this online-only miniseries, “Design by the Book,” the Library partnered with the leading design blog Design*Sponge to invite five New York City-based artists to sift through our collections in search of inspiration. Stay tuned for future episodes as the artists, who range from a glassblower to a letterpress printer, create unique works inspired by what they found; special guest Isaac Mizrahi will also join us to share his sources of inspiration. The artists are: Lorena Barrezueta, Rebecca Kutys, Mike Perry, John Pomp and Julia Rothman.
Via Coudal
When will then be now?
g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.
Not to get all geeky here, but this is cool. Or I just like wearing gloves. And gesturing. Um…
Again, via Doobybrain
50 people, 1 question. NYC edition.
Fifty People, One Question: New York from Crush & Lovely on Vimeo.
Same premise as the New Orleans version. Answer the question: “What do you wish to happen by the end of the day?”
If I’d been asked this today, my reply would have been totally selfish. I wish that Apple would call me and say that they’re sorry they doubted me when I told them that my brand new MacBook Pro was faulty, and that they’re giving me a replacement.
UPDATE:
Wow. This wishing thing sure is powerful stuff. Apple didn’t call exactly. I had sent an email to the store manager with my little video (he had given me his card when I was all grumpy in the store) and they replied today. They’re going to replace my MacBook tomorrow, whee!
Via Doobybrain
The bestest Google View street evar
This is the “making of” vid, but in case you haven’t heard of Street with a View:
On May 3rd 2008, artists Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley invited the Google Inc. Street View team and residents of Pittsburgh’s Northside to collaborate on a series of tableaux along Sampsonia Way. Neighbors, and other participants from around the city, staged scenes ranging from a parade and a marathon, to a garage band practice, a seventeenth century sword fight, a heroic rescue and much more…
Street View technicians captured 360-degree photographs of the street with the scenes in action and integrated the images into the Street View mapping platform. This first-ever artistic intervention in Google Street View made its debut on the web in November of 2008.
Via Wooster
A total gear-mesh of the heart
Looks kind of like it would be a pain to make. So, I’m glad someone else did it.
My flickr
